Lengua al Ajillo (Spanish-style Beef Tongue with Garlic)
Lightly browned beef tongue slices are smothered with garlic lemon butter sauce. Lengua al ajillo will make a bright and dazzling addition to your holiday menu.

Ingredients
- 1 kilo beef tongue cooked and peeled
- 125 grams butter
- 6 cloves garlic peeled and thinly sliced
- ¼ cup sweet white wine
- 2 tablespoons lemon juice
- salt to taste
- pepper to taste
- sliced scallions to garnish
Instructions
- Cut the beef tongue into slices about a quarter of an inch thick.
- Melt two tablespoons of butter in a frying pan.
- Lightly brown the beef tongue slices in the butter. Flip them over to brown the opposite side.
- Arrange the beef tongue on a serving plate.
- Add another third of the butter to the pan. Throw in the garlic slices and cook over medium-low heat, scraping the bottom of the pan, until lightly browned.
- Turn up the heat to high and pour in the wine. Boil, uncovered, until reduced by half.
- Turn down the heat and add the remaining butter. Swirl the pan around to melt.
- Off the heat, stir in the lemon juice. Season with salt and pepper. Stir. Taste. Add more salt, pepper or lemon juice to suit your preference.
- Spoon the sauce over the beef tongue. Spread the garlic on top.
- Garnish with sliced scallions and serve your lengua al ajillo.
Notes
Why lengua al ajillo? Because I so love pollo al ajillo and I had this gut feel that the sauce would go well with beef tongue. It turned out I was right.
And the really great thing about this dish? It’s even easier to cook than pollo al ajillo. How is that possible? Isn’t cooking beef tongue labor intensive? Not really. It does require a long time to cook but if you have a slow cooker, that simplifies the process. Cook the tongue. Cool. Wrap. Chill until firm to make slicing easier. See the details.
The rest of the cooking procedure will take no more than 20 minutes. How’s that for a holiday dish?


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